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SnakeBytes: Tanakamania! edition

Hey, did you hear, there's a Japanese pitcher who might be available. I wonder if the D-backs know about him?

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Photo from 'The Only Real Game'

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Around baseball

  • The Only Real Game - a documentary about a remote corner of India, where baseball has held on insteard of cricket, where the equipment may be lacking, but the participants "pursue the game with a purity of purpose – a passion – the rest of us perhaps can only dream of." Sounds rather interesting.
  • Million Dollar Arm - speaking of baseball in India, there's a feature film out in May, which starts Jon Hamm as an agent who comes up with the idea of a reality show to find potential pitcher in the billion-person population of India. Here's the trailer.
  • [ESPN] Best baseball songs - "Forget Jingle Bells. We're in the mood for a different kind of music. Baseball music. Here's Off Base's take on the game's best songs."
  • [AP] Rangers’ Leonys Martin Held for Ransom in Mexico in 2010 - "Like many Cuban baseball stars, outfielder Leonys Martin dreamed of leaving the communist island for the bright lights and big money of Major League Baseball. Martin accomplished his goal in 2011...but not before what court documents and the Justice Department describe as a harrowing ordeal in which he was held for ransom in Mexico while his family members were kept under surveillance in South Florida."
  • [Baseball Nation] The end of the Papelbon-sized contract for closers - "Unless there's a nascent super-closer close to free agency who's going to emerge in the next few months, we're pretty far from the next Papelbon contract. We might not see it again for several years, if ever."